• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

NASA Cruises Through Flight Countdown

Posted on: Monday, 11 July 2005, 18:00 CDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- With no major technical snags and a fair weather forecast, NASA cruised through the countdown Monday for its first space shuttle flight in 2 1/2 years.

Discovery and its crew of seven are set to blast off Wednesday with a multitude of NASA cameras watching for the kind of flying debris that doomed Columbia in 2003.

"To be at this moment now is just tremendous," said Stephanie Stilson, a NASA manager who oversaw Discovery's safety modifications. "It leaves me with goose bumps every time I think about it."

She said seeing the countdown under way was especially satisfying because of all the hurdles and setbacks experienced by her team over the past year and more.

"We're finally here. Is this really happening? Are we really going to launch?" Stilson said she asked herself when the countdown clocks began ticking.

"Along the way so many times, we had our hopes up just to find out that we would have to delay for numerous reasons," she said. "We had, of course, hardware problems. We had new modifications that had to be installed that we weren't aware of at the beginning of the flow. We had hurricanes. So a lot of things had been discouraging along the way."

Tropical weather still could interfere. Dennis, although no longer a hurricane, could leave a week of thunderstorms in its wake, and a new tropical depression in the Atlantic was another source of concern.

"We're going to be looking at it quite closely," said test director Pete Nickolenko.

Forecasters were hoping a ridge of high pressure would provide a break in the weather, and they put the chances of an on-time afternoon launch at 70 percent.

Discovery is outfitted with a redesigned external fuel tank, and has dozens of motion and temperature sensors embedded in the wings to detect any blows from fuel-tank foam insulation or other debris. The spaceship also holds a brand-new laser-tipped 50-foot boom that will be used by the astronauts to survey the wings and nose cap for any cracks or holes.

More than 100 cameras on the ground and aboard two planes will focus on Discovery as it climbs toward orbit, and spy satellites as well as astronauts on both the shuttle and the international space station will take their own pictures. The shuttle will spend more than a week at the space station, replenishing its cupboards and repairing broken equipment both inside and out.

NASA failed to request spy satellite pictures of Columbia in orbit, and dismissed the foam that hit the shuttle at liftoff as trivial. The resulting hole in the left wing caused the spacecraft to break apart during re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003, killing all seven astronauts.

The Columbia accident investigators insisted that NASA rely on spy satellite pictures on all future shuttle flights, and that the space agency have at least three good, useful views of the shuttle on its way to space.

---

On the Net:

NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

More News in this Category